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Productivity trends in the
machine tool accessories industry
As measured by output per employee-hour, productivity in the machine tool accessories industry grew at an average annual rate of 1.4 percent during the 1963-82 period, somewhat below the growth rate of 2.4 percent for all manufacturing.1 During this period, the annual rate of increase in output was 2.4 percent and the rate of increase in hours was 1.0 percent. (See table 1.) Continued improvements in production machinery and the adoption of numerical control equipment to run the machinery have enabled productivity to improve at a gradual rate for the past two decades.
During the first half of the 1963-82 period, productivity growth rose at an average annual rate of 2.4 percent from 1963 to 1973. Output averaged 2.1 percent a year, while hours declined at an average rate of 0.3 percent. During the second half of the period, 1973-82, productivity declined at an average annual rate of 0.7 percent. Output grew at a rate of 0.9 percent, but this growth was exceeded by the 1.7 percent annual average increase in hours.
This excerpt is from an article published in the June 1985 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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1 The machine tool accessories industry is composed of establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing cutting tools, machinist's precision measuring tools, and attachments and accessories for machine tools and for other metalworking machinery. The industry is designated as SIC 3545 in the Standard Industrial Classification Manual, 1972. All average annual rates of change are based on the linear least squares trends of the logarithms of the index numbers. Extension of the indexes will appear in the annual BLS Bulletin, Productivity Measures for Selected Industries.
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